


Left In Its Scabbard

by MelayneSeahawk



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angelic weapons, Aziraphale's Flaming Sword (Good Omens), Blood and Injury, Book Elements, Crowley Was Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Crowley has faith, Detente, Hark! A Fight Scene, Healing, Kilts, M/M, Magic Healing, Military Uniforms, Permanent Injury, Playing Fast and Loose With Biblical History, Poison, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Principality Aziraphale (Good Omens), Show Elements, The Author Is Jewish And Back On Her Bullshit, The Fall (Good Omens), Violence, War in Heaven (Good Omens), mentions of archangels - Freeform, mentions of unnamed demons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:00:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26737756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelayneSeahawk/pseuds/MelayneSeahawk
Summary: the War in Heaven: Aziraphale has a flaming sword, gets injured, and meets a strange Fallen angel
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 57





	Left In Its Scabbard

**Author's Note:**

> For [Swordtember](https://cinnamon-shakes.tumblr.com/post/627951839286067200/swordtember), for the theme, and prompts: fire, divine relic, powerful.
> 
> Title is a reference to the Japanese proverb "A good sword is the one left in its scabbard."
> 
> self-betaed, un-Britpicked, we Fall like Crowley

Looking back, Aziraphale remembered being honored that he had been selected as one of the principalities that would guard the Gates of Eden, given a corporation and a flaming sword and sent down to watch over God’s newest creations. This had been  _ just _ before the First War -- it had been the final decisions over Earth, Eden, and the humans that had sparked Lucifer’s rebellion, and all the sad, scary events that followed -- so Aziraphale had first used the sword, not to protect the Garden or the humans, but to cut down his own siblings. He had fought to incapacitate, not kill, but the sword was not so kind; he found out the hard way that the sword could destroy even a celestial being, no matter how small the injury.

So he had switched to fighting defensively, parrying and blocking, unwilling to actually strike an opponent unless there was no other way. And it seemed he wasn’t the only one, either; at least a few of the Fallen angels he went up against on the infinite battlefield seemed content to trade a few blocks and near misses before scurrying off.

It both helped and hurt that the Fallen were already changed by their disobedience, unrecognizable as the angels they had once been. For those who were more murderous -- Michael, and those most like her -- it likely made it easier to destroy them, to think of them as completely unrelated to the siblings they had lost. To Aziraphale, it made it worse: any of them could be a lost friend, a companion whose only ‘sin’ was disagreeing with, or even just questioning, the Will of God.

Most weapons would not instantly kill an angel, not even celestial weapons; flaming swords like Aziraphale’s were  _ special _ . He’d even tried turning off the flames, but it hadn’t made a difference; the blade killed just the same, and he’d gotten yelled at by Gabriel when the archangel had seen the blade unlit. An injury on his thigh meant he was slowed and in danger, and all of it made Aziraphale want to hide, to toss the sword away,  _ something _ , anything to keep from killing his siblings while still not getting killed himself.

And then, like an answer to a prayer, a sort of fold appeared in the foggy, largely featureless landscape, revealing a little pocket of reality that Aziraphale could slip sideways into and disappear.

The space wasn’t empty, though, he found when he slid inside; another being, a  _ Fallen _ , was already there. He -- for he seemed roughly he-shaped, at least according to the human blueprints Aziraphale had seen -- pressed himself back against the far wall of the little space, empty hands held up in a clear gesture of  _ not a threat _ .

The Fallen was tall and slim, less monstrous than most of those that Aziraphale had seen or fought with out on the field. He was still strange-looking, with yellow, slit-pupiled eyes and a sigil of some sort on his right temple, peeking out from beneath his hair. His robes and his wings were tattered and black, his long, wavy hair a fiery red, and he was so familiar it made Aziraphale want to cry, even though he couldn’t quite tell who the Fallen was,  _ had been _ .

“Not a threat,” the Fallen said aloud, and Aziraphale realized his sword was still held at the ready. He flushed, quenched its flames with a thought, and sheathed it at his side, holding his hands up as well.

“Neither am I,” he said, and when the Fallen didn’t relax, he reached up and removed his helmet, running a hand through his sweat-flattened curls to fluff them back up a little. He knew he looked a mess, from his wild hair, to his uniform torn and spattered with golden-red and ichorous black blood, to his shoes, which were somehow caked in mud despite the landscape outside their little bubble of calm not even being made of dirt. The Fallen didn’t look much better, though, long hair tangled, wings ragged, skin and hair blackened in places with ash. He must have been one of the last to Fall, Aziraphale guessed.

Aziraphale didn’t turn his back on the Fallen, precisely -- he may be soft, but he wasn’t a fool -- but he moved to an edge of the bubble of not-space, where a wave of his hand raised up a hump that he could sit on. He collapsed onto it with a groan, hand going to his thigh.

“You’re injured!” the Fallen exclaimed, taking a step toward Aziraphale before stopping short, as if pushing down the instinct to help. “What happened?”

“One of your side, they hit me with something,” Aziraphale said, investigating the injury gently, but unwilling to flip up his kilt to take a real look at it.

“Not my side,” the Fallen said darkly, with a flash of something in his golden eyes. “I can take a look, if you like.”

“Why should I trust you?” Aziraphale blurted out, though there was a part of him that yearned to do just that. He clenched his fingers in the fabric of his wrecked kilt, heedless of the blood and grime on it.

“I was a--” The Fallen stopped, coughing, and that likely confirmed the rumor that Aziraphale had heard that the Fallen couldn’t speak of who they had been before the Fall. “I can heal,” he tried instead. “I won’t hurt you, angel. I feel no malice toward your kind.”

“And how do you know  _ I _ won’t hurt  _ you _ ?” Aziraphale countered, but the Fallen seemed to realize he was bluffing, because he did step forward now, sinking to his knees just outside of Aziraphale’s reach.

“I have Faith,” the Fallen said, with a sardonic grin. “Come on, lift up that kilt and let me take a look.”

Unsure why it felt so right to trust the other being, Aziraphale rucked up his kilt to reveal the wound. It turned out to be a long gash along the top of his thigh, so deep he could see the bones he hadn’t been entirely sure he had until this moment, slightly cauterized at the edges, which probably explained why it didn’t hurt as badly as he might have expected.

“There’s poison in the wound, I can sense it from here,” the Fallen said, and Aziraphale looked up quickly. “It’s dulling your pain -- letting you think you can keep fighting -- but if you go on like you were, it’ll destroy you.”

Aziraphale focused his senses on the wound, on his body, and he could just barely sense the poison the Fallen was talking about, nipping around the edges of his perception, easy to miss unless you knew to look for it. “What can be done?” he asked, throat clogged with unshed tears. He didn’t want to die, not before everything had really, properly, begun.

“I can draw the poison out, and try to heal the wound,” the Fallen said, shuffling just a tiny bit closer. He raised a hand to push some of his hair over his shoulder, and Aziraphale noticed distantly that the sigil on his temple was a snake. A name danced on the tip of his tongue. “I don’t know how the healing will affect an angelic body, all things considered,” he said, with a bittersweet smile, “but I can try.”

Aziraphale nodded, and the Fallen reached out, a pale hand hovering over the wound. He closed his eyes, and Aziraphale allowed himself to stare at the Fallen’s face while he concentrated. Aziraphale felt a strange sensation, starting at the ends of his extremities and working its way inward toward his wound, and then the Fallen was lifting his hand up, drawing an inky, amorphous blackness up out of the gash. Aziraphale barely kept himself from gasping aloud, not wanting to distract the other being.

Aziraphale did not know how long it took until the last of the dark energy was drawn from his wound, little tendrils of the stuff clinging to the jagged edges before the Fallen grunted and jerked his hand upward and the last remnants let go with a sickening snapping sound. The other being quickly brought his other hand to press the blackness between them, keeping it from reaching out to Aziraphale again, and the stuff shrank down into a small, dark sphere before disappearing entirely. The other being opened his eyes, smiling triumphantly, and Aziraphale felt an odd warmth spread through his entire being.

“That’s the poison gone,” the Fallen said, seemingly unaware of whatever was going on with Aziraphale’s corporation, and possibly what he had instead of a soul. “Let me see what I can do about the actual wound.”

“No, I’m fine,” Aziraphale said, stumbling sideways to get up and away. The Fallen frowned, and Aziraphale added quickly. “I really appreciate what you’ve done. But I must get back, before I’m missed.”

“Stay safe out there, angel,” the Fallen said, with another ironic grin, but there was a sincerity to his tone.

“And you...I don’t know what to call you,” Aziraphale admitted.  _ Fallen _ seemed like an insult, after what the other being had done for him, and the word  _ demon _ had not been invented yet.

The other being opened his mouth, then closed it with a thoughtful expression. “I’m...not sure what my name is now,” he said. Aziraphale considered responding with what he was pretty sure was the other being’s old name, but that felt almost cruel. “Well, I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

“I suspect you may hope not,” Aziraphale said quietly, summoning his helmet back to himself and reluctantly strapping it back onto his head. A wave of a hand over the damage to his uniform sealed the cut but did nothing for the grime on the fabric or the injury on his thigh -- he wasn’t a healer, never had been, and his full access to miracles would come later. He turned away, unsure how to say goodbye, both curious and afraid of the warmth in the center of his being, and slipped out of their bubble of calm and back out onto the field of battle.

And when they met again on the Wall of the Garden, after the War was over and the humans had Fallen from Grace, Crawley didn’t mention the encounter, so Aziraphale didn’t either.

**Author's Note:**

> Playing a little fast and loose with Biblical "history", but eh.
> 
> [reblog link](https://melayneseahawk.tumblr.com/post/630722624512753664/left-in-its-scabbard-melayneseahawk-good-omens)
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](https://melayneseahawk.tumblr.com/)!


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